1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a sorter with a stapler on a copier, printer and the like, and more particularly to a paper arranging and positioning mechanism for stapling papers copied or printed.
2. Description of Related Art
Generally, a sorter with a stapler is provided with not only a function of sorting paper sheets driven out of a copier but also a function of binding the sorted paper sheets. If the paper sheets distributed and stacked onto bins are not arranged neatly and then positioned at a region where they can be bound by a stapler before stapling, the stapler can not trimly bind the stacked paper sheets. Thus, the operation of arrangement and position must be made before the stapling operation in order that the stapler can properly perform its function. Therefore, various paper arranging and positioning mechanisms have been designed for carrying out these operations.
As for a mechanism having such functions as neatly arranging and positioning the paper sheets and then stapling the paper sheets, U.S. Pat. No. 5,031,890 discloses a sorter with a stapler, as shown in FIG. 1A and FIG. 1B, having construction of the pivoting device 500 and the stapling device 400. The pivoting device 500 has pushing members for positioning or neatly arranging paper sheets on the bins and a device for shifting each pushing member to a position which matches the paper size. The stapling device 400 is made up of the stapler 401, the chuck section 421 for pulling a stack of paper sheets 301 toward the stapler 401, and a mechanism for moving the stapler 401 and the chuck section 421 up and down to any one of the bins 400.
However, in this sorter with a stapler, the movement of paper stacks from the initial position on the bin to the stapling position is executed by two separate mechanisms, one of which is the pivoting device 500 for arranging and positioning the paper stacks loaded on each bin, the other of which is the stapling device 400, including the chuck section 421, for pulling the positioned stack of paper sheets on the particular bin into the stapler 401. Thus, the construction of the mechanisms is so complicated that the number of components thereof is increased, and as a result, the cost of production is high.